Category: Uncategorized

THE STRUGGLE 

Tell us about yourself.

As a Senior Agricultural Policy Advisor in the USAID Ethiopia Mission, I am responsible for providing advice on land and agricultural policies to the Mission, and I design and manage land administration and development projects. I currently manage the Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) project that aims to improve the tenure security of rural people in Ethiopia by strengthening land legal frameworks, improving the capacity of land administration institutions, certifying community land rights, and promoting research and learning. I serve as a co-chair of the national land administration and use task team and participate in other land platforms working to improve the tenure security of landholders. I wrote a number of papers and presented some of them at World Bank conferences. I have also published a doctoral dissertation entitled “Implications of Land Policy for Rural-Urban Migration”.

Why is land tenure/property rights important to your work at USAID?

USAID allocates about 800 million dollars annually to support economic growth, agriculture, food security, health, and education in Ethiopia. To achieve assistance objectives and sustain development gains, it is paramount to secure land tenure security and property rights. The issue of tenure security and property rights has attracted the attention of leadership at both USAID and the Government of Ethiopia (GOE). If tenure security and property rights of citizens are protected, this would help attract more foreign direct investment, encourage farmers to invest in their land, reduce conflict, and improve land governance.

What are some of the biggest challenges you see in addressing land tenure/property rights issues in Ethiopia? And how are we tackling these challenges?

Ethiopia is governed under an ethnic-based federal system. Regional states are constitutionally mandated to administer land, while the federal government provides the broader legal framework. Regions enact their respective land laws based on the federal legal framework, but the regions determine the detailed land administration provisions such as the length of land rental periods according to regional contexts and political interests. Although such a decentralized land administration system is helpful when working with each region separately on ways to improve tenure security by relaxing restrictions, for example, it also leads to heterogeneous land administration systems and inconsistent land laws throughout the country. In addition, the Federal Government takes a very long time to amend land laws because it is very difficult to achieve consensus from the regional states.

USAID has introduced an evidence-based, land policy development approach by involving local universities in assessments of land laws and related research. Local universities have played an important role in identifying issues and suggesting solutions to regional governments. The evidence-based approach has been effective at encouraging the federal and regional governments to revise existing land laws and to amend restrictive articles.

What are some successes USAID has achieved in the land sector?

The issue of land tenure security has remained a politically sensitive issue in Ethiopia since land became a state property in 1975. The GOE leadership once mentioned that land policy will be changed on the burial ground of the ruling party. However, despite this firm stance of the ruling party and government on land, USAID has worked tirelessly to convince the Government of Ethiopia to work on amending its land policy. After a USAID and GOE joint assessment of the status of land administration in 2004, GOE become open to working on land administration and policy issues.

In 2005, USAID launched the first ever land administration project that helped to review Ethiopia’s legal frameworks on land, pilot certification of landholdings, raise public awareness of land policies, and improve the capacity of land institutions. Since then, USAID has been at the forefront of the land sector by supporting the enactment and implementation of land laws, introducing GIS-referenced landholding certificates, building capacity of land institutions, encouraging research and learning on effective land administration, and expanding land certification to pastoral areas. USAID’s support and achievements have attracted other donors such as the UK’s Department for International Development to invest more than $100 million to expand land mapping and registration activities to millions of small-scale farmers. Recently, USAID has assisted with the surveying and registration of communal holdings in pastoral areas. If GOE issues communal land certification as planned, it will be the first time that pastoral communities’ land rights have been formally recognized in the long history of the country.

Final thoughts?

The experience in Ethiopia with regards to influencing land policy taught us the need to be patient to achieve results. Although the initial attitude of government officials towards addressing tenure security issues was discouraging, our sustained long-term effort helped them understand the importance of land sector reform. There are still many issues requiring the attention of decision makers to improve tenure security and property rights, but we remain optimistic that government officials are open to continued dialogue and action. In fact, the successful introduction of land use planning into GOE policy is encouraging and is paving the way to work further on securing smallholder land use rights and avoiding land allocation for investments without adequate studies and consultation of communities.

A LAND RESTITUTION POST-SENTENCING TECHNICAL ROUNDTABLE IN MONTES DE MARÍA IS A SPACE THAT ENABLES THE INSTITUTIONAL COORDINATION NEEDED TO TO COMPLY WITH ORDERS ISSUED BY LAND JUDGES IN FAVOR OF LAND CLAIMANTS THAT WERE DISPLACED DURING THE ARMED CONFLICT. IN THIS INTERVIEW, ELLA CECILIA DEL CASTILLO, REGIONAL DIRECTOR OF THE LAND RESTITUTION UNIT IN BOLÍVAR, DESCRIBES HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS IMPROVING DELIVERY OF SERVICES ION THE POST-RULING PHASE OF LAND RESTITUTION.

Q: How is land restitution process going in Bolívar thus far?

A: In Bolívar, the government has received 5,972 land restitution requests, and 93% of those have are in process or have been answered. In this moment, there are 1,104 demands—corresponding to approximately 16,000 hectares—in the hands of land restitution judges and magistrates. In Bolívar, nearly 5,400 hectares have been restituted. This corresponds to 205 individual and collective rulings, representing approximately 380 families. Some 60% of the rulings are in the course of implementation, and 40% of the cases are pending material delivery.

Q: One of the pitfalls in the implementation of restitution orders has to do with secondary occupants and the ability to vacate the land inhabited by a secondary occupant in order to deliver the land to the claimant. How have you solved this?

A: In the department of Bolívar, we have been pioneers in this issue of secondary occupants and in practice we have created new paths. Along with Sucre, we are the two regions with the most cases of secondary occupants. We have sought solutions together with the other institutions involved, including the restitution judges. We have managed to avoid forced eviction, rather for judges to convene preparatory hearings where all the entities are present, and we generate short-term commitments that will help the secondary occupant. This must happen before there is any recognition of ownership of a property where we know that there is a secondary occupant. If we don’t do this, a very complex situation is likely to unfold. We are trying to adopt practices that mitigate the amount of collateral damage and avoid that the secondary occupants are re-victimized. We also count on the support of regional authorities that assume many of the tasks necessary for the accommodation and transfer of the people, but the ultimate goal of this exercise is that there are no forced evictions and that our restitution work does not causes further damage or negative impacts upon our communities.

Q: Do joint spaces such as the post-sentencing technical roundtable enable the LRU and government partners to address issues such as secondary occupants and order compliance?

A: Yes, these spaces have been fundamental in terms of coordination between the institutions that are involved in land restitution, because together we can better identify bottlenecks and problematic situations preventing compliance and delivery. In these spaces, we have achieved significant coordination with the judges on the issue of secondary occupants and the compliance of delivering the property in question to the original owner. In addition, the LRU has been developing a methodology involving a series of visits along with the judges so that the relevant entities can comply with the ruling’s orders that favor the secondary occupant, who will be leaving the land. This methodology has provided excellent results, and there are recent cases in which we have seen valuable experiences of reconciliation between the second occupant and the claimant.

The Land Potential-Knowledge System (LandPKS; landpotential.org), a joint USAID-USDA program, was created to help put valuable information about the land, including climate, soils, and vegetation, in the hands of land managers across the world. It does this through the use of the LandPKS Mobile app, which is free to download and use for both Android and iPhone. Importantly, LandPKS is a way to both input and access data that is point-based and geo-referenced. The LandInfo module is one component of the LandPKS app and allows the user to obtain information about the soil directly beneath their feet. The LandInfo module walks a user through digging a hole and hand-texturing the soil to determine the soil texture and available water holding capacity or AWC. Future versions of LandInfo will also include infiltration rates, organic matter, soil color, and have algorithms that match the user-input data about soil texture with global soil maps to provide the user with the specific name of their soil.

The point-based model used by LandPKS is incredibly powerful because in many parts of the world the soil varies significantly from place to place and these changes in soil types can have dramatic impacts for farmers and others aiming to utilize that land. One excellent example is from the village of Nyamihuu, located near Iringa, Tanzania (photo below).

With local farmers, the LandPKS team dug three LandInfo Plots within a short distance from each other on a slightly sloping landscape. The differences in soil texture and AWC were quite drastic, with the Lower Field having almost double the AWC of the Upper Field. This has serious implications for farmers because the Lower Field will be generally more productive due to the greater ability to hold water in the soil for crops to utilize. Further, the Forest plot had by far the lowest AWC, which is important because it suggests that clearing the forest for cultivation may not be worth the effort and environmental impact.

The lesson here is that location matters! Soil can vary from one farm to the next, and LandPKS can empower farmers, agricultural extension agents, and others to gain access to site-specific soil information. Knowing your soil texture and AWC can influence what decisions are made. First, it can help a land manager decide if they want to farm a piece of land or not. As the example of the Forest plot above shows, some land is not suitable for agriculture, and LandPKS can help provide knowledge to show this. Second, soil texture and AWC may influence decisions about crop selection or crop varieties. Planting crops that are suitable for their specific soil will help farmers increase production and farm more sustainably. For example, the farmer on the Upper Field may want to plant more drought resistant crops or practice water conservation measures in order to make up for the lower AWC of their farm. Location matters, and LandPKS is one tool that can provide point-based, geo-referenced data to those who need it to make more sustainable land management decisions. For more information about LandPKS please visit our website at landpotential.org or e-mail us at contact@landpotential.org.